An open message to the Scottish Heritage community

[Auld Chiel]

I recently joined this forum because I enjoy engaging in the open exchange of knowledge and ideas pertaining to my Scottish heritage and its culture and traditions. Since becoming a member of this forum I have had the pleasure of doing so with several of the other members, apart from one who seems bent on displaying an evident dislike of me through his numerous discourteous remarks. I realize that in any public forum one is apt to encounter individuals from all walks of life who are entitled to their own personal likes, dislikes, prejudices and persuasions - such is the nature of the human character.

Some of you reading this may know me through other avenues of communication, or through my involvement in the Scottish heritage community. Some may only be familiar with me through what others have said. Like everyone else, I have opinions on various subjects and some of my opinions have been met with controversy among those who do not share my beliefs and convictions. I have even dealt with the unpleasant experience of encountering slanderous accusations and outright lies from time to time, which sadly some people seem intent on perpetuating.

Much of this unpleasantness began more than a decade ago when the Clan Akins Society was first organized under my leadership. The Clan Akins Society was founded as a Scottish family heritage association by various members of the Akins Clan for the purpose of preserving and promoting the customs and traditions belonging to our Scottish cultural heritage and ethnic identity. As a direct descendant of the senior male line of the family and as one of the foremost advocates of honoring my family’s Scottish origins, I was given charge of leading the Clan Akins in this regard as its head and chief. A fact that was looked upon with some degree of askance by some members of the Scottish heritage community outside of my clan who evidently felt that both the Clan Akins and my position as its chief was not properly vetted through the office of the individual who they wrongly presumed to have authority over such matters, the Lord Lyon King of all Arms and Bearings of Scotland.

It should be said here that Lord Lyon is the British Crown’s authority over heraldic matters in Scotland and that he has the power to grant new coats of arms and to recognize the rightful bearers of ancient coats of arms in Scotland on behalf of the British monarch. Beyond that however, Lord Lyon has absolutely no authority over Scottish clans, nor over the leadership of Scottish clans (see: The Lord Lyon and his Jurisdiction "From an allowance of proof the Court excluded all questions relating to the chieftainship and the relative positions of the parties within the clan, holding that neither chiefship of a whole clan nor chieftainship of a branch of a clan was a legal status justiciable in a court of law, but had the character of a social dignity only, and, accordingly, that the Lord Lyon had no jurisdiction to decide the disputed question of who had right to the chieftainship either directly or incidentally when disposing of the claims for supporters and for a birthbrief.”)

As I am neither a resident nor a subject of the United Kingdom, but a Scot by ethnicity born in the United States where the vast majority of the Akins Clan is located, there was never any legal requirement for me to approach the Court of the Lord Lyon for his recognition of my right to bear my ancestral coat of arms. Despite this fact some members of the Scottish heritage community outside my own clan became very vocal in regard to their expectations for me to do so, arguing over the legitimacy of the Clan Akins and my leadership of it unless I approached Lord Lyon and received his recognition of my right to bear my ancestral coat of arms which I had already registered as my personal property through the Copyright Office here in the United States, there being no recognized heraldic authority to govern such matters in the U.S.

Having communicated with Sir Crispin Agnew, Rothesay Herald in the Court of Lord Lyon, I was advised that it might be possible for me to receive Lyon’s recognition of my arms as “ancient arms”, that is to say a coat of arms proven to have been in use prior to the establishment of Lyon’s Register of All Arms and Bearings of Scotland that was first begun in the year 1672.

My ancestors did in fact leave evidence of their having used our coat of arms dating back several centuries in the form of monumental inscriptions depicting the armorial achievement on their gravestones here in the United States, so I decided to petition the Lord Lyon for his recognition of the arms as “ancient arms” based on this evidence.

During this time my marriage of 12 years to my former wife was coming to an end due in large part to her involvement with a Mr. William Wallace, a resident of Glasgow, Scotland, who she would later live with for several months before ultimately returning to America. Because I had been awarded temporary custody of our two young children upon my filing for divorce, and because my ex-wife was seeking to obtain custody in order to sue me for child support and alimony, she and Mr. Wallace contrived to discredit me through a Scottish tabloid of questionable repute by having a slanderous article published in which Mr. Wallace alleged that I had attempted to bribe him for the purpose of planting a fake tombstone in Scotland to use as evidence in my petition before the court of Lord Lyon.

To make a long story short, although my ex-wife did temporarily gain custody of my two children who she took with her to Scotland to live with Mr. Wallace for six months against court orders, I was ultimately awarded full permanent custody of both of my children upon her return to the United States. During the time when my petition to the Lord Lyon was pending, the then Lord Lyon, Sir Malcolm Innes of Edingight decided to retire from his position in Lyon Court and several months passed until a new Lord Lyon, Robin Blair, was appointed in 2001, taking up my petition which his predecessor had never came to a determination on. The new Lord Lyon who had little previous experience in heraldic matters eventually came to the decision that because the evidence of my family’s use of the coat of arms was in the United States rather than in Scotland, he could not declare them to be “ancient arms” according to the qualifications set forth in Scottish heraldic law.

No determination was ever made by the Lord Lyon pertaining to the status of the Clan Akins as a Scottish clan, nor in regard as to my position of leadership as the clan chief, as such matters are completely outside the jurisdiction of Lord Lyon and the court of law as has already been pointed out. Despite Lyon’s failure to recognize my ancestral coat of arms as ancient Scottish arms, they remain my personal property, protected by law under the United States Copyright Office. The Clan Akins remains a Scottish clan, being that it consists of a group of individuals of Scottish descent having a common ancestor and bearing the same surname, which is all any clan is.

Sincerely,

Steven Lewis Akins of that Ilk

[tig]

hi Auld chiel

dont take this the wrong way and im glad you finally got your kids custody but was there ever a clan in Scotland called Akins? and having lived here all my life ive never even heard the name

ive had a look through various clan sites and cant find any mention of them on scottish sites, only in american ones which i suspect will be your doing.

[Auld Chiel]

Originally Posted by tig

hi Auld chiel

dont take this the wrong way and im glad you finally got your kids custody but was there ever a clan in Scotland called Akins? and having lived here all my life ive never even heard the name

ive had a look through various clan sites and cant find any mention of them on scottish sites, only in american ones which i suspect will be your doing.

Akins is the most usual spelling of the surname in the United States, where the vast majority of our clan is located, having come here as early as the 1600's. In Scotland the spelling of Aiken has come to be the more usual form over the past couple of centuries, although there never was a universally accepted standardised spelling of the name, and it is found variously rendered as Aiken(s), Aikin(s), Akin(s), Eakin(s), Eachin, etc., both in Scotland and in Ulster (where many of our clan settled in the 17th century).

The first recorded appearance of the surname occurs in the year 1405 in the court records of a Scottish sea merchant named "John of Akyne" who sought restitution for having been kidnapped by Laurence Tuttebury of Hull, England, who pirated his ship and goods. Other instances of its use occur in the early records of Scotland where the surname is seen to have undergone a variety of transformations in spelling, accounting for the many variant forms of the name still seen today. Included among these early records are William Ackin, who was a witness in the parish of Brechin in the year 1476. John Eckin was a tenant under the Bishop of Aberdeen in 1511. John Ackyne served as bailie of Stirling in 1520. Robert Aykkyne was admitted to the burgess of Aberdeen in 1529. Bessie Aiken of Leith was found guilty of Witchcraft in 1597, narrowly escaping execution. William Ekyn was a lessee on the Cunningham estate in Ulster in 1613. Robert Aickeene is listed in a muster roll of the Duke of Lennox’s men in Raphoe, County Donegal, Ireland in 1630. John Aekin was a passenger to Warwick County, Virginia, in 1645. David Akin of Aberdeen was an early settler in Newport, Rhode Island, with his wife and family before 1664. A Covenanter named John Aiken fought in the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679. Alexander Aiken of Glasgow was listed as a pipe-maker in the Hearth Tax rolls for 1690. Alexander Aiken of Bo'ness, West Lothian, was among the Scots colonists who took part in the ill-fated Darien expedition in 1699. Edward Acken, an Ulster-Scots immigrant, was among the founders of the town of Londonderry, New Hampshire in 1720. ''The William Akins'' a brigantine cargo ship sailing from the port of Belfast to the River Clyde ran aground on the rocks north of the ferry at Kyleakin, Scotland, on 18 October 1872. Variations of the name were said to have been common in the parish of Ballantrae, as well as in the counties of Aberdeen, Fife, Lanark, Perth, Angus, Renfrew, Ayr, Dumbarton, Stirling and the Lothians. In Ireland the name is common only in Ulster, where many Scots colonists settled in the 17th century.

[Auld Chiel]

Here are a few biographical references to some various members of our clan that have appeared over the years in assorted historical publications:

"David AKIN, who came to Quaker Hill with the influx of settlers between 1730 and 1740, and settled south of the BIRDSALL place, was a descendant of John AKIN, who emigrated from Scotland to Rhode Island in 1680. At about the same time Alice AKIN and his wife Elizabeth whose first son was born in 1739, emigrated to Quaker Hill. Whether he was brother to David AKIN or not is not known, but it is assumed that from these two originated the different families of that name in the town." - from: History of Dutchess County, New York, Chapter XLVII by James H. Smith 1882

"Maj. James H. Akin of Thompson's Station, Tenn., was born in Maury county, of that state. Aug. 12, 1832. He was the son of Samuel W. Akin, who was born in South Carolina, Feb. 24, 1788, and was the son of Rev. John Akin, also of South Carolina, born in 1761. John Akin's father was William Akin, a native of Scotland. But little is known of his life further than that he came to the United States at an early day and settled in South Carolina. Rev. John Akin was reared in South Carolina and was a soldier of the Revolution. He married Mrs. Mary Watson Howe, allso a native of South Carolina and widow of Robert Howe who was killed in the war. When a very young man he took up the ministry and was the first Methodist Minister to cross Duck Creek. He settled in the western part of Maury county in 1808." - from: Notable Men of Tennessee by John Allison 1905

"Henry Aiken, a man of commanding intellect, numbered for many years among the greatest consulting mechanical engineers, not in Pennsylvania alone, but in the United States. The original home of the Aiken family was in Scotland and the name has been variously spelled Akyne, Aikyn, Akin, Akins, Akyng, Akens, Aken, before assuming its present form, Aiken. Henry Aiken was born August 2, 1843, in county Down, Ireland, and was a son of John and Sarah Davison) Aiken. When about five years of age he was brought to the United States. They landed in Philadelphia and went directly to Pittsburg, where the boy attended the public schools. At the outbreak of the Civil War, being then only in his eighteenth year, he enlisted as a ninety-day man, and at the expiration of his term of service re-enlisted for three years, serving from 1861 to the close of the war....Mr. Aiken married, June 20, 1870, Nellie, daughter of James and Eliza (Croft) Culton, of Edgerton, Wisconsin, and they became the parents of one daughter: Nellie, who is now the wife of Dr. Edward Graver." - from: Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography, vol. II by John W. Jordan 1914

"AKINS, THOMAS BEAMISH, lawyer, historian, archivist, and bibliophile; b. 1 Feb. 1809 in Liverpool, N.S., only child of Thomas Akins (Akin), merchant, and Margaret Ott Beamish; d. unmarried 6 May 1891 in Halifax.
Thomas Beamish Akins’s mother died ten days after his birth and he was brought up by her family in Halifax, along with his first cousin, Beamish Murdoch, who was nine years his senior and like an elder brother to him. He almost certainly followed Murdoch in attending Halifax Grammar School, where he would have received a solid classical education. After training for the law in his cousin’s office, he was called to the Nova Scotia bar on 3 May 1831. Most accounts state that Akins had a lucrative practice, mainly as a solicitor (his name rarely appears in the court records of the day). The income from this practice and most likely a fairly substantial inheritance soon made him independently wealthy, allowing him to retire at an early age and devote himself to archival and bibliophilic pursuits.
Akins was by temperament an antiquarian rather than a historian, and his few published works reflect this trait in their strictly factual, chronological approach. In addition to his history of Halifax, he published A sketch of the rise and progress of the Church of England in the British North American provinces (Halifax, 1849), A brief account of the origin, endowment and progress of the University of King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1865), and an article, “The first Council,” in the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society for 1879–80. He served as president of the society in 1882–83 and at his death was one of its vice-presidents. He was also an honorary or corresponding member of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, the American Historical Association, and the historical societies of Massachusetts, Maryland, and Texas.
Throughout his life he was a kindly and generous man. In his will, among many charitable and religious bequests, he left $7,000 for the support of the Halifax City Mission. The remainder of his $54,000 estate was bequeathed to numerous relations. The annotation on his burial record in St George’s Church, Halifax, is a line from Horace, “Multis bonis flebilis occidit” (He died mourned by many good men).


AIKINS (Eakins), JAMES COX, farmer, politician, office holder, and capitalist; b. 30 March 1823 in Toronto Township, Upper Canada, son of James Eakins and Ann Cox; brother of William Thomas; m. 5 June 1845 Mary Elizabeth Jane Somerset in Toronto, and they had five daughters and three sons, including Sir James Albert Manning and William Henry Beaufort*; d. 6 Aug. 1904 in Toronto.
In 1816 James and Ann Eakins emigrated from County Monaghan (Republic of Ireland) to Philadelphia. After four years they moved to Toronto Township, where Eakins took up land about 13 miles west of York (Toronto). A Presbyterian, he converted to Methodism and made his home a local centre for worship. He sent his eldest son, James Cox Eakins, to the Methodist-run Upper Canada Academy (Victoria College) in Cobourg, from 1840 to 1845. James Sr was a successful farmer and he accumulated sufficient land to provide his sons with farms. Shortly after his marriage in 1845, James Cox received a lot in Toronto Gore Township and began farming on his own. Some time thereafter he changed the spelling of his surname to Aikins to resemble its pronunciation more closely.

AIKINS, Sir JAMES ALBERT MANNING, lawyer, politician, and lieutenant governor; b. 10 Dec. 1851 in Toronto Gore Township, Upper Canada, second son of James Cox Aikins and Mary Elizabeth Jane Somerset; brother of William Henry Beaufort; m. 10 Dec. 1884 Mary Bertha McLelan in Ottawa, and they had two sons; they divorced 9 July 1892; m. secondly 6 Sept. 1899 Mary French Colby (d. 1931) in Stanstead, Que., and they had three daughters, one of whom died shortly after birth; d. 1 March 1929 in Winnipeg and was buried in St John’s cemetery.
Of Irish extraction, James Aikins was born and raised on his parents’ farm in Peel County, near Toronto. He was educated in public schools in Malton (Mississauga) and Brampton before attending Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto (ba 1875, ma 1876). On graduating in 1875, he “tried business” in the warehouse of the firm Macnab and Marsh, but he decided instead to become a student-at-law.
After establishing himself in his profession in Winnipeg, Aikins had married Mary Bertha, the daughter of Archibald Woodbury McLelan, federal minister of marine and fisheries. One of their sons, James Cox (Jamie), died when he was only six; the other, Gordon Harold, succeeded his father as head of the law firm. The marriage ended in divorce in 1892. Seven years later he married Mary French Colby, a granddaughter of Moses French Colby. As well as the family home, Riverbend, Aikins owned and supervised the operation of a large farm at Elkhorn, Man. He was an avid outdoorsman, especially enjoying hunting and golf. To further interest in the arts, he established scholarships in English at the University of Manitoba and the University of Toronto and prizes for school choirs at the Manitoba Music Competition Festival. After his death his son, in his memory, donated the Aikins Memorial Trophy for senior instrumentalists, which is still presented at the festival.
To celebrate his 50 years at the Manitoba bar, Aikins gave a banquet for 450 members of the profession in Manitoba and from across Canada on 25 Feb. 1929. Congratulatory messages came from around the world. A sudden heart attack prevented him from attending the festivities, his condition worsened, and he died just after midnight on 1 March. After lying in state in the legislative building, he was accorded a state funeral during which Archbishop Samuel Pritchard Matheson noted that he would be remembered as “a great and brilliant member of the legal profession, a magnetic and eloquent public speaker, a great legislator, a great educationalist, a great philanthropist, and above all, a great Canadian citizen.” - from: Dictionary of Canadian Biography

[tig]

any evidence that these people where even related to one another?...finding people called akin doesnt mean its or ever was a clan does it?

there is no evidence of a akin clan in scotland that i can see.

(and from reading what i found online youve been removed as head of your own society and the lord you speak of has said its not a clan)

[Auld Chiel]

Originally Posted by tig

any evidence that these people where even related to one another?...finding people called akin doesnt mean its or ever was a clan does it?

there is no evidence of a akin clan in scotland that i can see.

(and from reading what i found online youve been removed as head of your own society and the lord you speak of has said its not a clan)

Misinformation runs rampant on the internet, particularly in forums such as this one. The word clan simply means "family" or "descendants" and in a Scottish context refers to a group of people sharing the same surname and accepting themselves as being descended from a common ancestor, as is explained by Sir Crispin Agnew of that Ilk in his excellent essay on the subject:

Clans, Families and Septs

The difference between clans, families and septs is the source of many questions as is the question phrased in one way or another, which asks, "to which clan do I belong". There are many definitions of clans and families as there are people, but this article will try to indicate how these matters are viewed in the Lyon Court.
It should first be recognised that a clan or family is a legally recognised group in Scotland, which has a corporate identity in the same way that a company, club or partnership has a corporate identity in law. A clan or family is a ''noble incorporation" because it has an officially recognised chief or head who being a nobleman of Scotland confers his noble status on the clan or family, thus making it a legally and statutorily recognised noble corporation often called "the Honourable Clan…" A name group, which does not have a chief, has no official position in the law of Scotland. The chiefs Seal of Arms, incorporated by the Lord Lyon's letters Patent, is the seal of the corporation, like a company seal, but only the chief is empowered by law to seal important documents on behalf of his clan. A clan as a noble incorporation is recognised as the chief's heritable property - he owns it in law and is responsible for its administration and development.
So far the words clan and family have been used interchangeably in this article and this is the position. There is now a belief that clans are Highland and families are Lowland but this is really a development of the Victorian era. In an Act of Parliament of 1597 we have the description of the "Chiftanis and chieffis of all clannis...duelland in the hielands or bordouris" thus using the word clan to describe both Highland and Lowland families. Further, Sir George MacKenzie of Rosehaugh, the Lord Advocate (Attorney General) writing in 1680 said "By the term 'chief' we call the representative of the family from the word chef or head and in the Irish (Gaelic) with us the chief of the family is called the head of the clan''. So it can be seen that all along the words chief or head and clan or family are interchangeable. It is therefore quite correct to talk of the MacDonald family or the Stirling clan, although modern conventions would probably dictate that it was the MacDonald clan and Stirling family. The Lyon Court usually describes the chief of a clan or family as either the ''Chief of the Name and Arms" or as "Chief of the Honourable Clan - -"
Who belongs to what clan is of course, a matter of much difficulty, particularly today when the concept of clan is worldwide. Historically, in Scotland a chief was chief of "the ****rie". He was chief of his clan territory and the persons who lived therein, although certain of his immediate family, would owe him allegiance wherever they were living. The majority of his followers and in particular his battle relatively to a neighbouring chief, they would switch their allegiance to the other chief. Thus we find that when Lord Lovat took over a neighbouring glen to his clan territory for the donation of a boll of meal to each family, the family was persuaded to change their name to Fraser and owe him allegiance - to this day they are called the "boll meal Frasers". Another example is a migration of a family of the Macleans from the West Coast to near Inverness and on moving to Inverness they changed their allegiance from the Maclean chief to the chiefs of the Clan Chattan. Thus the Macleans of Dochgarroch and their descendants and dependants are properly members of the Clan Chattan and not members of the Clan Maclean even though they bear a common surname.
A chief was also entitled to add to his clan by the adoption of families or groups of families to membership of his clan, a good example being the "boll meal Frasers". Equally, a chief has and had the power to expel or exclude particular persons from membership of his clan and this included blood members of his family. It was his legal right to outlaw certain persons from his clan. This is accepted in the modern sense to mean that a chief is empowered to accept anyone he wishes to be a member of his clan or decree that his clan membership shall be limited to particular groups or names of people. All persons who bear the chief's surname are deemed to be members of his clan. Equally, it is generally accepted that someone who determines to offer their allegiance to the chief shall be recognised as a member of that clan unless the chief has decreed that he will not accept such a person's allegiance, Thus, if a person offers his allegiance to a particular chief by joining his clan society or by wearing his tartan, he can be deemed to have elected to join that particular clan and should be viewed as a member of that clan unless the chief particularly states that he or his name group are not to be allowed to join the clan.
It should also be said that the various Sept lists, which are published in the various Clans and Tartan books, have no official authority. They merely represent some person's, (usually in the Victorian eras) views of which name groups were in a particular clan's territory. Thus we find members of a clan described, as being persons owing allegiance to their chief "be pretence of blud or place of thare duelling". In addition to blood members of the clan, certain families have a tradition (even if the tradition can with the aid of modern records be shown to be wrong) descent from a particular clan chief. They are, of course, still recognised as being members of the clan.
Historically, the concept of "clan territory" also gives rise to difficulty, particularly as certain names or Septs claim allegiance to a particular chief, because they come from his territory. The extent of the territory of any particular chief varied from time to time depending on the waxing and waning of his power. Thus a particular name living on the boundaries of a clan's territory would find that while the chiefs power was on the up they would owe him allegiance but - if his power declined retrospectively at some arbitrary' date which the compiler of the list has selected. Often the names are Scotland-wide and so it is difficult to say that particular name belongs to a particular clan. Often surnames are shown as potentially being members of a number of clans, and this is because a number of that name has been found in each different clan's territory. Generally speaking, if a person has a particular sept name which can he attributed to a number of clans, either they should determine from what part of Scotland their family originally came and owe allegiance to the clan of that area or, alternatively, if they do not know where they came from, they should perhaps owe allegiance to the clan to which their family had traditionally owed allegiance. Alternatively, they may offer their allegiance to any of the particular named clans in the hope that the chief will accept them as a member of his clan. Equally, as has already been said, with the variations from time to time of particular chiefly territories, it can be said that at one particular era some names were members of or owed allegiance to a particular chief while a century later their allegiance may well have been owed elsewhere.
In summary, therefore, the right to belong to a clan or family, which are the same thing, is a matter for the determination of the chief who is entitled to accept or reject persons who offer him their allegiance.

Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw Bt.

As I mentioned earlier, Lord Lyon has absolutely no power whatsoever to make determinations of clan chiefships as such is entirely outside of his legal jurisdiction:

Evidence in the case of MacLean of Ardgour vs. MacLean:

P.220) (Q.) "In your view, what does the word "clan" mean? (A.) It has a general meaning of family, ordinary meaning of family, but there is a peculiar sense in which it is used for this quasi-feudal organisation in the Highlands, or you might say feudal organisation. (Q.) But its primary meaning, I think, is family? (A.) Yes. (Q.)In your view, did the clans in fact consist either of persons linked by blood or persons linked by reason of place of dwelling in a territory? (A.) That is the defination of the Act of Parliament. (Reference Acts 1587 & Act of 11 Sept, 1593 A.P.S., IV, p. 40) (Q.) Do you see a reference there to the pretence of blood or place of dwelling? (A.)Yes. (Q.)Are those familiar terms? (A.) Quite familiar. Pretence means claim...

Lord Wark, in Maclean of Ardgour v. Maclean 1941 S.C. at p. 657:

"I agree with your Lordships that Lyon has no jurisdiction to entertain a substantive declarator of chiefship of a Highland clan, or of chieftainship of a branch of a clan. [...] The question of chiefship of a Highland clan, or chieftainship of a branch of a clan, is not in itself, in my opinion, a matter which involves any interest which the law can recognise. At most, it is a question of social dignity or precedence. In so far as it involves social dignity it is a dignity which, in my opinion, is unknown to the law.

[tig]

think your clutching at straws tbh

Crispin Agnew (who ever he is) statement does not answer my question.
i know people with my surname who having nothing to do with my family.


and copy n pasting articles from the rampant of misinformation will never justify your claim

plus scots law doesnt work on precedent so your second c&p does nothing for your argument and the only mention of said case on the rampant of misinformation has been posted by someone with the name akin lol


thus my conclusion is..(after spending about an hour searching...but that was enough to conclude my investigation).....youve started a "clan" hoping to get others involved(you charged 15 dollars and invited anyone in the US with Akin as a name to join on the basis that they must be related because they have the same name) but have been unable to get "clan" status and have been ridiculed (quite rightly imho) by most of the scots heritage community and in an attempt to get said status youve quoted sources of rampant miss-information mostly posted by you n your followers in the 1st place.
also your claim to have copyrighted your historical coat of arms further disproves your claims as these if true and real would be un-copyrightable due to their age and common use...i dont believe you can copyright something while claiming its hundreds of years old.
you also said lord lyon has no jurisdiction to grand "clan" status but only after your request for him to grant you said status was denied!


and that your honour is the case for the sane people of scotland and i would instruct the jury to throw your case out

thanks you